7 inches of bliss – The economics of DIY vinyl

I’m currently working on the release strategy for Pantaloon Descendo's “7 inches of bliss”, which I will be laying out here sometime in the next few days.

It's taking a bit longer than anticipated to come up with all the details, because I'm freaking clueless when it comes to music marketing.

Uhm, how do you marketing?!?

While I’m ironing out the details for the marketing strategy, I thought it would be interesting to explain some details on the production of the sleeve for “7 inches of bliss”.

Honestly, the initial decision to draw all of them by hand was a cost-cutting measure. Pressing 100 7-inch vinyls with printed sleeves would have cost $1,500. On the other hand, printing them with blank chipboard sleeves (solid brown-ish cardboard sleeves) was $1,300.

So, according to my initial calculations, if I were to draw them myself, I’d actually save $200.

Turns out, drawing them was quite an endeavour. In pure DIY style, this is what it entailed:

FRONT SIDE:

1) Write out “Pantaloon Descendo” in a stylish way (7 minutes)
2) Draw the stickman (3 minutes)
3) Color the stickman’s face (1 minute)
4) Draw the stickman’s face (1 minute)
5) Color the rainbow (7 pencil changes:  4 minutes)
6) Write “7 inches of bliss” (2 minutes)
7) Add all the little metallic-colored sperm (2 minutes)
Total time for the front side: 20 minutes

BACK SIDE:

1) Draw 3x big sperms (3 minutes)
2) Lettering track list and numbering (4 minutes)
3) Contouring 3x big sperm (2 minutes)
4) draw all additional colored sperm (2 minutes)
Total time for the back side: 11 minutes

Total time per copy: +/-30 minutes.

30 minutes for 100 copies equals 50 hours.

So, it took me 50 hours to save $200. 

Was it really worth it? 

Based on time alone, every hour worked on it saved me $4.

But that’s not all there is to it. Let’s add the cost of the art material I had to purchase:

- it took me roughly 20 archival pens, ($2,50 each). Chipboard is really rough and ate through the archival pens’ tip very early.

- three white pencils ($1 each) to colour the face. 

- 7 coloured pencils for the rainbow ($1,50 each)
- 5 metallic pens to draw the sperms on the rainbow ($3 each)

Total art cost: $78.50

So, if we factor that in, I saved $2.43 per hour (or $1.215 per copy) since I was able to produce 2 copies per hour.

All in all, it took me 50 hours to save $121.50; not exactly a sound investment, because it means I worked at an hourly rate of $2.43. My day job pays waaaay more than that.

But…

The sleeves look fucking amazing!

Given the amount of time versus the money I saved… Would I do it again?

The answer is a reluctant yes, only because it looks really really good.